Harsh Discovery
by almuvira
Summary: For 10 years before we met him, Harry Potter endured a childhood no one should be subject to.
1. Chapter 1

**It's not the best and it's not even proof read but I did this late at night because I couldn't sleep until I got the thought out.**

**Nobody ever spares a thought for the young Harry who had no parents to squeal with glee at his first steps, to cry at his first day at school and to hug him for his first a+ report card. I thought about it and it made cry. Everything belongs to JKR.**

It was a hot summer's day and a small seven year old boy with jet black hair and astonishingly green eyes sat by himself at the back of his class. He wore round broken glasses and clothes that were too big for him and on his forehead was a curious scar in the shape of a lightning bolt.

"Today we will write about our mum and dad." Said his teacher in a voice that was falsely cheerful as she begun handing out sheets of paper. "Be sure to write their names, your favourite thing about them and what you do on the weekends.

"Yes, Harry?" she asked as the black haired boy at the back timidly put his hand up.

"I don't have parents." He said quietly and the whole class burst into laughter led by a very large pig-like blond boy who happened to be Harry's cousin, Dudley.

"They put him up for adoption!" he shouted loudly.

Harry felt tears fill his eyes.

"That's enough!" cried the teacher angrily. Mr. and Mrs. Dursley had warned her about Harry Potter. 'He is a big nuisance at home,' they had said, 'always trying to cause problems.' They complained. She ignored Harry's quiet sniffles and went back to her desk. Harry was left with nothing to write about.

Twenty minutes later the teacher called up pupils to the front of the class to read out what they had written.

"Samuel Jenkins." She said and a short curly haired boy stood up.

"My mum and dad are called Dylan and Jillian. I like them a lot because they always give me big presents for my birthday. On the weekends we go to the zoo or something to the park or sometimes we go swimming and sometimes we go to our friend's houses." He sat back down. Harry looked at him and wondered why his aunt and uncle never took him to the zoo or to the park.

"What did you write?" The teacher asked when Harry had stood up for his turn.

"Nothing." He said quietly.

"Speak up!" She said tersely.

"I didn't write anything." He said but nobody heard him because the bell went at exactly that moment and all the students hurried to get out of class.

As Harry was walking out the door Dudley pushed him forcefully to the ground and walked off laughing towards his father who was also laughing in his car. By the time Harry had found his glasses, which had fallen off, and stood up Uncle Vernon's car had driven away and Harry began his forty minute walk home.

"Where have you been?" Aunt Petunia asked angrily when he finally walked in the door, and not waiting to hear an answer shooed him away. Harry walked glumly to his cupboard under the stairs. He climbed in and shut the door behind him, greeting the spider that scurried off his pillow as soon as it saw him.

Dudley ran down the stairs, jumping on each one so that the dust fell into Harry's eyes, screaming "Dinner! Dinner! Dinner! Dinner!"

When everyone was seated at the table Harry asked the question that had been bothering him all day.

"Why don't I have any parents?"

Uncle Vernon choked on his wine and Aunt Petunia dropped the fork that she was feeding to Dudley.

"They died in a car accident." Uncle Vernon said harshly, regaining his composure as Dudley began hitting his fists on the table demanding Aunt Petunia to continue feeding him.

And that was that.


	2. Chapter 2

That night Harry couldn't get to sleep. Locked in his cupboard under the stairs, he shifted as much as was possible in his tiny bed, shaking spiders and dust onto him. It was the first time in his life he felt there was something wrong with the way he lived. Before he had always assumed that there were a lot of people out there without parents, or who also had to live in cupboards under stairs because their siblings or cousins needed two rooms for all their toys. He had never felt sorry for himself, and the thought of having parents with whom he'd go to the zoo, or to the park never occurred to him before Samuel Jenkins' recount.

Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon always fed him, even if it was sometimes stale leftovers which Dudley refused to eat, he always had clothes on his back, even if they were big enough to wrap around his tiny frame three times due to them being hand-me-downs from Dudley, and he had a place to sleep, to shelter him from rain and snow, even if it was an insignificant, and sometimes, locked up cupboard under the stairs.

He tried to remember something, anything, about his parents, but because they had died when he was merely one year old it was impossible for anything to come into his mind. Eventually his tired eyelids closed and Harry was enveloped into a deep sleep.

Awaking the next morning from Dudley's morning ritual of jumping especially hard on each stair that roofed Harry's little room, Harry's first thought went back to his dream. In his dream everything was a vivid, poisonous green colour; there was a baby boy – which Harry imagined was him – riding a very small and colourful broomstick. It would hover a little above the ground and then zoom around a pair of legs. Every time he'd pass an agitated looking cat, he would make it meow and jump away, causing little Harry to laugh hysterically.

Harry laughed to himself remembering a particularly odd part of the dream where a handsome, scraggly haired man walked into their house, said hello to the man who owned the pair of feet, gave the woman, who was sitting at a nearby table and looking lovingly at Harry, a hug and then transformed into a dog, making little Harry laugh even harder as he chased the cat all around the room.

"Hurry up, boy!" banged Uncle Vernon on Harry's door as he marched heavily past the cupboard, forgetting that it was locked.

Still happily remembering the wonderful dream which felt so familiar, so homey, so happy to Harry, he didn't hear Uncle Vernon's shout and kept trying to return to the dream.

"Where is that ungrateful horror?" asked Petunia angrily, whilst shoveling a fifth egg onto Dudley's bowl, and then with a sudden change of expression to obsessive adoration towards her son's demands of "More! More!" she said "What a healthy, growing sunshine."

Dudley was very definitely growing, and growing at a frightening rate. His father very proudly called him his 'uncanny miniature' and Petunia bought them matching clothes, exclaiming: "How wonderful! How sweet!" in a breathless voice whenever Vernon and Dudley wore them.

After forfeiting the last of the eggs to Dudley, Aunt Petunia briskly walked over to Harry's cupboard.

"I guess you won't be having any breakfast today!" She said to the door, almost too smugly, and spotting a spot of dust on the stair banister ran to the kitchen to find a cloth with which to wipe it.

Harry heard his Aunt's statement and sighed. He turned on his bed and slowly sat up, careful not to hit his head on the ceiling. A week ago Dudley lost a toy soldier and threw the rest in the trash claiming he couldn't play with an incomplete set. While Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were getting ready to go to the shops to buy Dudley a new set Harry snuck the ones from the trash into his cupboard. He saw a spider hiding amongst them now.

"Hello Hamish." He said to his spider friend. "Have you had breakfast today?"


End file.
